eDiscovery Daily Blog

A Half Salary Guide is a Whole Salary Guide: eDiscovery Trends

When it’s from Robert Half.

Robert Half’s 2017 Legal Salary Guide (downloadable from here) once again features salary ranges for more than 100 positions in the legal field and provides some other interesting statistics, as well. Here are a few highlights.

  • Incentive for Retention: In a survey of 200 lawyers among the largest law firms and corporations in the US, when asked which of the following provides the best incentive for legal professionals to remain with a law firm or company (aside from compensation or bonus), 34 percent of respondents said “Challenging work or variety of assignments”, 26 percent said “Flexible work arrangements” and 20 percent said “Professional development opportunities”. “Good corporate culture/work atmosphere” was a distant fourth at 6 percent.
  • Practice Areas with Greatest Job Opportunities: When asked which of the following practice areas will offer the greatest number of job opportunities at your law firm or company in the next two years, 36 percent of the same respondent group said Litigation, followed by General business/commercial law at 25 percent. No other group had more than 8 percent. Interestingly enough, the same question posed to 150 lawyers among the largest law firms and companies in Canada resulted in a flip-flop of those two practice areas with 36 percent choosing General business/corporate law and 31 percent choosing Litigation. Maybe it’s because Americans are more litigious?
  • Litigation Support/eDiscovery Salaries: Starting salaries for litigation support/eDiscovery directors and managers are expected to increase from 7.8 to 8.9 percent annually from 2016! The top end of the salary range for litigation support/eDiscovery directors with 10+ years of experience is $141,500. Document coders also see an increase – 4.6 percent over 2016.

The guide also provides salary expectations for lawyers, paralegals, office managers, legal secretaries, legal specialists and contract and compliance administration positions for both law firms and corporate legal. Once again, they’re all up (big surprise!).

The survey guide also provides an adjustment for various US cities across the country (obviously, salaries are much higher in New York City (140.5 percent of the reported numbers for the different positions) than in El Paso, TX (72 percent). For example, the top end of the salary range for litigation support/eDiscovery directors with 10+ years of experience in Houston (107 percent for my hometown) is actually $151,405 (are you reading this, boss?). So, you can adjust the numbers based on local variances.

So, what do you think? Do the numbers surprise you? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Once again, it’s a FREE 36 page PDF guide which can be downloaded here. Check it out. Maybe you need a raise?

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.